Quill pig is another name for a porcupine. Porcupines are unattractive and unpopular, but, as animals go, and unlike eagles, elephants, and donkeys, they are reasonably harmless good neighbors that mind their own business. Here's where we can talk about being good neighbors and why it's eternally important.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

‘Breaker’ Morant, the 1980 film about a war crime and the
subsequent court martial during the British war against the Afrikaans
settlers in South Africa,is a story for our time at least as
much as it was for the time it was first released. The questions it
raises would have been especially relevant during Operation Desert
Storm, when the West banded together to drive the army of Saddam’s
Iraq from Kuwait. One image that endures from that war is of the
Highway of Death, where Saddam’s troops were mowed down in Iraq,
after they had given up the fight and left Kuwait, as they were
retreating full speed to Baghdad. Casualties also included civilians
who happened to be nearby at the time. Another memorable image is of
the civilians killed in hotels and hospitals by US bombs intended,
according to the US, for the military targets Saddam had placed
underneath them.

I was out of the country until Desert Storm was all but forgotten, so
I may have missed a heated national debate, but I never remember
hearing of anyone (least of all me) asking such questions as these:

Were those
soldiers and civilians killed legitimate targets, were they
murdered, or were they “only” collateral damage?

If they were
murdered, who is responsible for their murder?

Who is
responsible to deal with the murderers?

If they were
collateral damage, whom does God charge with determining how much
collateral damage is permissible?

What
criteria would that person or group use to make their determination?

I find these questions branches off of questions that go to the heart
of what it means to be a Christian neighbor.

Under what
conditions are we no longer commanded to love our neighbors as
ourselves?

Under what
conditions are we no longer commanded to do for our neighbors what
we would have them do for us?

Under what
conditions are we no longer commanded to love our enemies, do good
to those who hate us, bless those who curse us, and pray for those
who mistreat us?

Under what
conditions does the end justify the means?

Today, a dozen years after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,
these questions are still relevant.

‘Breaker’ Morant is based on the account of the lone
survivor of the court martial, so it may safely be considered biased,
but the characterizations of both protagonists and antagonists are
sophisticated enough to be worth pondering.

Before continuing, the reader would do well to be familiar with the
Boer Wars; the
Wikipedia entry is as good a place to start as any. There we find
that these were wars between two colonial powers fighting over land
and resources stolen from the original black inhabitants. As in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and as in Vietnam, the enemy of the soldier
protagonists, the Boers of the British in this case, was nameless and
perfidious, and even more so because they spoke an unintelligible
language and engaged in guerrilla warfare.

A Brief Synopsis of the Plot (Spoiler Alert)

The incident that triggers the plot is a nighttime raid by a British
platoon on a Boer guerrilla camp. Assured that they will be taking
the Boers by surprise, the British attack in plain sight, and many of
them are killed by the Boers, including Captain Smith, the father of
Morant’s intended bride. Morant later learns that Captain Smith was
not killed in the original fusillade but captured and tortured to
death. Soon after that a group of Boers, starving because the British
have imprisoned all the Boer farmers in the area and commandeered the
entire food supply, surrenders. Morant, convinced that they are the
ones who killed Captain Smith, has them shot by a firing squad, and
he has a buddy execute the local German clergyman whom he suspects of
having alerted the Boers to the impending attack.

As the court martial progresses, we find that the activities for
which Morant and his friends are being tried as murderers are common
practice, engaged in by even the judges, who are themselves soldiers.
Further, the government in London is especially interested in seeing
the conviction not because of concern for the Boers but because it
will strengthen the British case in negotiations of a treaty that
could grant them access to lands rich in exploitable resources.

The three men are found guilty. Morant and one of his friends are
shot by a firing squad; the third man spends ten years in prison, and
it is in the closing credits that the film is based on his account of
the ordeal.

The verbal exchange that prompts this post takes place on the way to
the firing squad. The chaplain asks Morant if he can pray for him.
Morant says no, he’s an atheist. The chaplain then asks the
companion the same question. The companion asks Morant what an
atheist is, to which Morant replies that an atheist doesn’t believe
that there is a good supreme being who works to bring justice to the
world. The companion at that point says he’s an atheist also.

Study Questions (Relevant even if you haven’t seen the film)

In what way
did the protagonists (Morant and his two friends) reflect the image
of God? In what ways were they trying to love their neighbors as
they loved themselves?

In what ways
did they show that the image of God in them was fallen? In what ways
were they “looking out for Number One”?

How did they
view their own morality?

If Morant
had been an evangelical Christian, how would Jesus have guided him
to deal with the Boers after Captain Smith’s death?

What
justification was there for the British to invade the Boer
territory? For the Boers to fight the British? For the Boers to
colonize Africa? In short, who was in the right in this situation?

If no one
was in the right, under what conditions should evangelicals put
themselves in situations where everyone is doing wrong?

Morant was
Australian, not British. Had he been evangelical, should he have
enlisted to fight?

In what way
did the antagonists (the court martial) reflect the image of God? In
what way did they show that the image of God in them was fallen? How
did they view their own morality?

How would
the court martial have ruled had those on it been evangelical
Christians?

The chaplain
was clearly a one-dimensional character, probably meant to be
Catholic or Anglican. His job was to serve God and serve his
“country” (i.e., his government). Would you say that in his
interactions with the three protagonists he served both equally, or
did he put his country’s interests before those of God, or did he
put the interests of God before those of his country?

How would he
have acted differently had he been evangelical?

There are
two firing squads in the story: the one that executes the Boers
captured after the Captain Smith’s death, and the one at the end
of the movie. How should a Christian have responded when ordered to
be part of those firing squads?

Given what he has experienced at the hands of the powers that be,
ordained of God, what evidence would you present to Morant that
there is a loving supreme being who dispenses divine justice?

Coda

I
submit that the wrongs done by the Boers to the original black
inhabitants of the territories were made possible by the state,
specifically the mentality that grants the state legitimacy. Without
the power to tax and the influence that comes from a Romans 13 view
of government power, individual Boers would have had to negotiate
with the local African clans for land and either acted honorably or
faced the Africans’ wrath. They could not have relied on the Dutch
guns to defend and advance their cause. The same can be said of the
British vis à vis the Boers. Both the British and the Boers wanted
the rules of engagement to favor them: the British were heavily armed
and wore uniforms, so they considered it unfair of the Boers to use
stealth. The Boers considered stealth legitimate because they could
not hope to outgun the British; they were not about to line up in the
open and let the British gun them down.

I
think it safe to assume that the Africans would have viewed
themselves as in the right because it was their land to begin with.
The Boers would have viewed themselves as in the right because they
were civilized “Christians” appropriating God’s earth for
God’s, not demons’, purposes. The British would have considered
themselves in the right because – well, because the British have
always considered themselves God’s chosen people, I guess.

In
the same way, US evangelicals considered themselves justified in
bombing Iraq and killing both retreating soldiers in their own
country and civilians during Desert Storm and again during Iraqi
Freedom, as well as Afghanistan after 9/11, for some combination of
pretty much the same reasons: the Iraqis and Afghans were simply the
Boers and Africans, respectively, to Uncle Sam’s Brits.

Please,
somebody, find me the good guy in ‘Breaker’ Morant.
Find me the character that an evangelical can be, who “needeth not
to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” If none can be
found, I suggest that no evangelical could please God by
participating in Uncle Sam’s wars in the Middle East.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

I claim in an earlier post
that World War II, like every other government program, accomplished “the exact
opposite of its stated intention,” and I will here defend my claim.

To make my case I need to
specify who it was who stated the intention, what that stated intention was,
and that the actual result was the opposite of the stated intention.

Since Franklin Roosevelt stood
head and shoulders above all other US political figures on December 7, 1941, I
believe he should be my source for the stated intention. From his speech to the
Congress: “The Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the
United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
… Japan has … undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific
area. … As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all
measures be taken for our defense.”

As a result of World War II, Japan ceased to be a military threat, as
did Germany and Italy. The war accomplished its stated goals. The Quill Pig is
wrong. Court is adjourned.

Mr. Security Guard, before you
throw me out of the empty courtroom, please let me whisper some words to the
fly buzzing around the light above me.

According to Woodrow Wilson,
World War I—which was not called that at the time, of course—was being fought
“to make the world safe for democracy.” Yet it didn’t. As it raged it literally
turned much of Europe into rubble. The treaty that ended the war starved
Germany—hardly a safe situation—and made a prophet of David Lloyd George, who
predicted that England would “fight another war again in 25 years time.” During
those years the Germans sharpened their war-making skills in Spain bringing
Franco to power. The world was not made safe for democracy.

That was World War I, not World War II. The job was not done completely
the first time, which necessitated a second war. The second war did the job.
What’s your problem?

As an example of the last, consider
the American Revolution. It was sold to the patriots with such slogans as “no
taxation without representation.” Most patriots hearing the slogan would have thought
that by being represented they would be able to keep their taxes low, don’t you
think? But after the war was won and the patriots were represented in their
federal government—surprise!—their taxes were higher than those in Great Britain.
Stated goal reached: expected result not.

Or another example: The
enslavement of the blacks in the US was an abomination. Emancipation was
supposed to be a good thing because freedom is a good thing. Yet the
post-emancipation Jim Crow era was worse than slavery for so many blacks that
the song “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child” composed in those days
became an instant hit. Stated goal reached: expected result not.

Were the losses from World War
II so great that winning was tantamount to defeat? Did the government deliver
on what those who believed the rhetoric were expecting?

I would suggest that the first
loss in World War II was freedom, the very thing the citizenry understood
Roosevelt’s request for a declaration of war as a call to defend. One of the
first actions the government undertook was to institute military conscription.
Conscription by definition puts those conscripted under the control of the
government. It is the most lethal form of state slavery. Compared with
literally dodging bullets and bombs, a 95% tax rate in peacetime looks like freedom.

Does slavery have to be called
slavery to be slavery? Or can de facto slavery be sold as something else? Is a
mugging only a mugging, or to the degree that the mugger has control over the actions
and resources of the muggee is it not a form of slavery? If it is, the same is
true of military conscription: it is slavery by another name.

Wilson conscripted soldiers for World War I, so you can’t blame that on
World War II.

Sure I can. By your own
admission, World War I was incomplete: World War II finished the unfinished
business of World War I. They are in essence one war.

Sneaky. Besides, Lincoln conscripted soldiers for the Civil War, so you
can’t pin conscription on World War II.

Only if I can’t call a burglary
on Wednesday a robbery because the same guy mugged the same guy on Tuesday.
Lincoln conscripted soldiers to kill, if necessary, their fellow citizens to
prevent them from getting out from under his rule. Funny that US government
propaganda these days tells us the conquest of the Confederacy was about ending
black slavery when Lincoln not only said in his first inaugural address that he
had no intention of interfering with black slavery but he also enslaved white
boys to go fight. Between conscription and Jim Crow, I see a difference between
what the government advertises and what it delivers.

Yes, but if we hadn’t gone to war against Germany and Japan, European
Jews would all have been killed, and the Japanese would still be using Korean
women as sex toys and treating all of China the way they raped Nanking.

I see no mention of Jews,
Koreans, or Chinese in Roosevelt’s speech. As president he swore to protect and
defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. Period. And
we know he hated the Constitution. He began the War on Drugs, though again not
by that name, by making marijuana illegal without amending the Constitution. (As
bad as the alcohol prohibitionists were, they at least got an amendment passed.)
Roosevelt also openly flouted the Constitution when he tried to increase the
number of Supreme Court justices so he could get the majority needed to vote
down objections to his welfare state measures. In the same way, to the degree
he was fighting the war to protect Jews, Koreans, and Chinese, he was violating
the Constitution.

But the war saved innocent lives and preserved freedom!

Lenin is quoted as saying, “Politics
is all about who does what to whom.” It makes all the difference in the world
whether you’re one of the “who” or one of the “whom.” Innocent lives were indeed
saved, but it’s also true that innocent people were killed. The carpet bombings
of Dresden and other German cities, the firebombing of Tokyo, and the two
atomic bombs all targeted civilians. And yes, US soldiers had targeted
civilians previously: Indians in the Southeast before the conquest of the
Confederacy, whites in the Confederacy during the conquest, Plains Indians,
Hawaiians, and Filipinos. To quote a term paper I just edited,

In one incident [in Dicken’s Hard Times], Mr. M’choakumchild, a teacher in Gradgrind School, … tries
to convince [a student] that a city of a million inhabitants in which only
twenty-five starve to death is prosperous. Sissy responds that [and here’s the
quote I want you to see] the deaths must be just as hard on the families of the
twenty-five when the survival rate is high as it is when it is low.

In the same way, the death of
the innocent civilians who opposed Hitler and Hirohito but happened to be where
the bombs fell is as horrible as the death of the the innocents from the buzz
bombs and the Holocaust. The moral logic of killing innocent people to save
innocent people escapes me. And, of course, anyone today who questions the
current zeal (there’s no other word for it) for collateral damage, whether by
the Clinton sanctions or the Bush-Obama military, is referred back to—Ta
daaah!—Dresden and Hiroshima.

Since World War II we as a
nation consider ourselves just that much more justified in killing innocent
people in the pursuit of our interests than we did before. I call that a
pyrrhic victory at best.

As for preserving freedom, I’m
not sure the Eastern Europeans, whom (there’s that word again) Stalin and Hitler
took turns pillaging and slaughtering, would say their freedom was preserved.
Nor would the Chinese, who were given the choice between a seriously flawed US
puppet and a Communist butcher. To say lives were saved and freedom preserved is
to echo the sentiments stated so well by Randy Newman:

Brother Gene
Was big and mean
And he didn’t have much to say.
He had a little woman that he whupped each day,
But now she’s gone away.
He got drunk last night and pushed Mama down the stairs,But I’m all right, so I don’t care.

And finally, there’s the
question whether the war was necessary to begin with. I see no compelling
reason for England, let alone the US, to have entered World War I. The best
explanation for England’s involvement is their desire to take over Germany’s
colonies, as they did in New Guinea. We got in because the Germans sank a
passenger ship that our government knew was carrying war materiel to England
and because Wilson wanted to have leverage in creating the League of Nations.
We got into World War II because the Japanese bombed the base of operations for
the sanctions we were applying to Japan because we wanted their colonies in
China.

We went to war to rescue the Jews?
Don’t make me laugh. The Final Solution wouldn’t have been needed if Roosevelt
had let Europe’s Jews immigrate, but he shut the door on them. To rescue the Koreans?
We told the Japanese when we took over the Philippines that we’d keep mum about
their treatment of the Koreans if they’d keep mum about our treatment of the
Filipinos. The Chinese? Tell me they weren’t gooks twenty years before the term
was coined.

“War is the health of the
state.” War stimulates government spending. Read any social studies textbook
and they’ll tell you that it was wartime spending that ended the Depression. Do
you think no one in power expected that to be the case (or at least that once
the fighting was over they’d be able to make the case successfully)? The
Keynesians who ran the government wanted war so it would end the Depression.
They took tax money and gave it to the armaments manufacturers: tax money for
politically connected businesses is the textbook definition of fascism. Uncle
Sam instituted slavery to fight slavery and fascism to fight fascism. In
enriching politically connected industrialists he succeeded marvelously, and he
set the stage for wars ever since, where the object has been to start them and
prolong them, not to win them, as winning them would mean mothballing the gravy
train.

Monday, July 7, 2014

“We’re over here getting our asses shot off defending them, and
what do we get for it? G*dd*amned traitors. I ever run into any of
‘em when I get back, it’ll be kick-*ss-and-take-name time.
F*ckin’ parasites.” – William Ehrhart, Hoi An, South Vietnam,
May 1967

“What the hell do these f*ckin’ people know anyway?” I
thought, addressing myself to the hippies in particular and to
everyone else in general. “What right do they have?” Immediately,
the other side of the question popped into my head: What right did I
have? What had I done in the past thirteen months to be proud of? –
William Ehrhart, San Francisco, April 1968

The
war in Vietnam – Uncle Sam, showing himself to be a true son
of the Father of Lies, called it a “police action” or “conflict”
– permeated my growing-up years like cigarette smoke. It affected
the economy, the arts, and, of course, the lives of those who fought
in it. William Ehrhart had the courage to do what I was never asked
to do and probably could never do: he voluntarily put himself in
mortal danger and held his ground once the killing began.

As
a hippie-background believer,i
I could not pass up the opportunity to see the war from the
standpoint of one who would have hated me had we met at the time,
especially as I occupy the same position today as an opponent of
today’s wars. Like one of Ehrhart’s friends, “I’m not a
conscientious objector. I’ll fight for my country; it’s just that
bullsh*t [overseas] I object to.” But questions about the morality
of today’s wars are hard to sell to today’s evangelicals. As “we
were attacked” in the Gulf of Tonkin and so supposedly needed to
send William Ehrhart and so many others to “defend ourselves,” so
“we were attacked” on 9/11 and so supposedly need to devote
thousands of soldiers and trillions of dollars to “defend
ourselves” now.

Though
published in 1983, by which time the war had been pretty well
forgotten, Vietnam – Perkasie refrains from passing judgment
on the war’s usefulness. It chronicles Ehrhart’s observations
from his decision to enlist until his stateside posting a few weeks
after his return from Vietnam. How fresh and accurate the accounts
are, I have no way of telling – I thought I read that he smuggled
in a notebook, but I can’t find it to double check – but either
he is a convincing liar or he has done his best to put together a
truthful account of the disillusionment of the idealistic, patriotic
young man who used to live next door.

More
importantly, it also chronicles the degradation of a human being, a
destruction of the soul every bit as deplorable as that of teenage
girls brought into the sex trade by kidnap or hoodwink. With suicides
currently exceeding combat deaths in today’s military, the question
needs to be asked if the same thing is happening today, and if so,
why evangelicals are abetting the process by standing with the
government and against those who protest today’s wars the way they
stood with the government that degraded William Ehrhart and against
those who rightly claimed that the Vietnam war was not about
defending our freedom.

According
to the Vietnam vet I spoke to last summer, the government has learned
the lesson of Vietnam. He told me again recently that while he was
greeted on his return from Vietnam with taunts of “baby killer!”
today’s returning vets are treated right: parades, applause in
airports, overwhelmingly positive spin in the mainstream media, the
whole nine yards. However, babies are still being killed in combat,
and the wars have not secured our freedom. If anything, the extra
security measures by those sending the soldiers overseas taken since
“we were attacked” on 9/11 have robbed us of our freedom. Even
so, though, they are still dying by their own hands faster than “the
enemy” can kill them.

Are
the soldiers over there really concerned with our freedom? Or are
they just
doing their jobs? I know a soldier who said in as many
words that he enlisted because it was the only way he could learn to
fly. He eventually got around to saying he wanted to “serve [his]
country,” but the short answer was that he wanted the benefits that
came with enlisting. So was he out for my freedom, or for my tax
money?

“Stop
being willfully ignorant,” I hear you say, “their job is to
defend our freedom.” One of Ehrhart’s heroes believed that also:

The next afternoon, Amagasu
and I were sitting in the S-2 shop when a bunch of strangers walked
into the COC through the door down at the operations end of the
bunker. Most of them were wearing green utilities, but a few were in
civilian clothing.

“Floyd,” he said. “I
just wanted to come over here and thank you boys for what you’re
doing. I’m proud to be an American, and I just wanted you fellas to
know that. How are things going?”

“Oh, not too bad,” I said.
“We’re hangin’ in there. Say, Champ, I saw you beat Johanssen
on television when you won the title back. I was just little then,
but I still remember it. That was a great fight, Champ.”

“Well, thank you, Corporal.
… “ …

“Say, Champ, can I ask you
something while you’re here?”

“Sure. Shoot.”

“What do you think of this
Cassius Clay business? You think he should be allowed to keep the
title?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,”
he said, his whole body shifting slightly, “Clay—you know, he
likes to be called Mohammed Ali now; says he’s a Black Muslim——he’s
a heck of a good fighter. Maybe one of the best. But he’s an
American, too, and I think he’s forgotten that. Even a Champion’s
not above the law and the responsibilities of being a citizen. If he
won’t defend his country, he shouldn’t be allowed to defend his
title. It’s not fair to you boys.”

Was
sending Ehrhart and the others to fight a war they knew they wouldn’t
win and had no intention of winning “fair to [those] boys”? Why
do evangelicals continue to side with those who sent and against
those who said they shouldn’t go? While Floyd Patterson’s
intentions were faultless, in the end he was less a friend to Ehrhart
and the boys than Mohammed Ali was.

We
know war kills soldiers’ bodies. What we push under the rug is that
it also kills them spiritually. Their very survival often depends on
their ruthlessness.

As we walked toward the COC in
the late afternoon heat, the Vietnamese from the gook shop were all
standing up near the front gate—three men and five women. Three
armed Marines stood around them.

“What’s that all about?”
Rowe [a new arrival] asked.

“They work in the gook shop.
We don’t have a PX or anything like that, but we got a gook shop
where you can get a haircut, buy souvenirs and stuff. They do
laundry, too; that’s what’s in those big bags. They take stuff
home overnight and bring it back in the morning. Stuff comes back
smelling like paddy water and buffalo sh*t, but I guess it’s better
than nothing.”

“What’s this here, honey?”
we could hear one of the guards saying. He had his hand up the front
of a young woman’s pajama top. He laughed as she ﬂinched and drew
away.

“Cheap way to get a feel,”
said Rowe. “What’s he gotta do that for?”

“He’s searching her. Well,
anyway, he’s supposed to be searching her. All the gooks at the
shop get searched on the way in and going back out again at night.
They could be carrying grenades, who knows what?”

“What do we let ’em in
here for if we can’t trust ’em?”

“I wouldn’t trust Nguyen
Cao Ky if he showed up here,” I said.

“Who’s that?”

“The premier of South
Vietnam. Listen, that’s just the way it is. There’s Vietnamese
around here, and there’s VC. And most of the time, you don’t know
which is which until it’s too late. You want one of those ladies to
lob a stick of dynamite under your cot?”

“It is that bad?”

“It’s worse,” I replied.
“Two weeks ago, Saunders and I were driving through Hoi An, right
through the middle of town, and a g*dd*mned kid maybe eight or nine
years old runs up and tries to flip a grenade into the jeep. A
grenade! I had to blow ’im away. A little kid. It was really bad,
you know. My kid brother's only twelve. And you know — the grenade
went off and killed a couple of gooks — so you know what? Some guy
shows up here the next day and wants the civil affairs officer to pay
him compensation for his dead wife. I couldn’t believe it! The
g*dd*mned kid tries to kill us, and they want money. Like I don’t
feel bad enough already, you know?”

And
this was in a comparatively peaceful part of the country. What is
house-to-house combat like?

After nearly a year in rural
areas – never even entering a city except on rare and brief
official business – we were faced with dislodging an obviously
well-prepared enemy from a built-up urban community of considerable
size. We had no experience at this kind of fighting, and the
on-the-job training cost us heavily. A great many civilians must
have died in the fighting. If you saw or heard – or thought you saw
or heard – movement in the house next door, you didn’t stop to
knock; you just tossed in a grenade.

And I fought back
passionately, in blind rage and pain, without remorse or conscience
or deliberation. I fought back at the mud of Con Thien, and the
burning sand of Hoi An, and the alien blank faces in the market place
at Dien Ba; at the Pentagon generals, and the Congress of the United
States, and the New York Times; at the Iron Butterfly, and the
draft-card burners, and the Daughters of the American Revolution; at
the murderer of [his girlfriend in Hong Kong], and the son-of-a-bitch
who had taken [the girl who jilted him] flying in his private
airplane; at the teachers who had taught me that America always had
God on our side and always wore white hats and always won; at the
Memorial Day parades and the daily Pledge of Allegiance and the
constant rumors of peace talks and the constant absence of peace; at
the movies of John Wayne and Audie Murphy, and the solemn statements
of Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara; at the ghosts of [his friends he
had watched die]; at freedom and democracy and communism and the
monumental stupidity with which I had delivered myself into the hands
of the nightmare; at the small boy with the terrible grenade in his
hand, cocked and ready to be delivered into my lap. … It was a pure
and simple purgation of the soul. A sacred rite. A necessity. I had
no idea – had not the slightest inkling – what I was fighting for
or against. I was terrified.

“A
great many civilians must have died in the fighting.” Then the US
military withdraws, “the enemy” wins, and The End of the World as
We Know It that men like Ehrhart were told would arrive if “the
enemy” won doesn’t arrive. It was all a lie. What do you do when
you find that out?

Long
before he was thrown into the worst of the fighting, Ehrhart knew he
had been lied to and was now part of the lie himself.

“What’s this?” Rowe
asked the next morning, pointing to the piece of paper tacked to the
wall above my ﬁeld desk in the COC.

“Read it,” I said. On the
paper were pasted an article from the daily military newspaper, Stars
’n’ Stripes, and four entries clipped from our battalion’s
I-Sums [intelligence summaries]. All ﬁve items were dated within a
few days of each other and arranged in chronological order with the
newspaper story ﬁrst. It detailed how a platoon from Bravo Company
had captured a cache of Vietcong supplies during a ﬁreﬁght in
which three VC were killed; the take included several bolt-action
riﬂes, a few cases of Chinese-made grenades, some explosives,
ammunition and rice. The article concluded with a quote from some
general up at Division that we’d set the VC war effort back in our
battalion’s area by at least four months. The excerpts from the
I-Sums included: amtrac loaded with grunts from the Horseshoe hits
ﬁfty-pound box mine, ﬁve dead, eleven wounded; Delta Company
patrol ambushed near Phuoc Trac bridge in broad daylight, two dead,
six wounded; bridge on Highway 28, 500 meters north of battalion
command post, blown up by VC sappers; Charlie Company platoon
commander wounded by sniper. At the bottom of the page, I’d typed
in: “If you can’t trust your local general, who can you trust?”

“Are you kidding me?”
asked Rowe when he’d finished reading.

“There it is,” I said, “in
black and white. Lyndon Johnson says we’re winning the war because
Lyndon Johnson’s generals tell him we’re winning the war. You
ﬁgure it out.”

“That g*dd*mned piece of
paper is seditious, Ehrhart,” said Lieutenant Roberts, entering the
S-2 shop in the middle of our conversation.

“Oh, good morning, sir. I
can't help it, sir; it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my
life. You could order me to take it down, sir.”

“Who says we’re supposed
to control infiltration?” I replied. “We’re just target
practice for the gooks. Uncle Ho and LBJ got a deal between ’em: we
supply the targets; they supply the artillery. Gives everybody jobs.
In ain’t infiltration we’re supposed to be controlling;
it’s inflation.”

That
“the enemy” ended up winning bothers my Vietnam vet acquaintance
not a bit, at least not in comparison to the reception he got when he
got home. Ehrhart explains his view: “How do you go through things
like that, and then tell yourself it wasn’t worth it?”

I’ll
close with what was for me the most heartrending passage in the book.
It puts a human soul, if not a face, on the twenty casualties the
Vietnamese suffered during the war for every US casualty. I’m sure
Sergeant Trinh’s story can be repeated many times mutatis mutandis
not only in Vietnam but in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is why
Christians in the US should consider armed force the last, not the
first, resort for solving the problem of evil. Like every other
government program, war, the ultimate government program,
accomplishes the exact opposite of its stated intention.ii
If you can read this without choking, you might seriously question
your own humanity.

Sergeant
Trinh was a Vietnamese adjunct to Ehrhart’s unit. The excerpt
begins when Ehrhart hears that Trinh is being disciplined and sent
away, and comes to visit him. He offers him some licorice:

“Why
do you offer with both hands?” Trinh responded. The sudden sense
that I had somehow accidentally insulted Trinh seized me by the
throat. I wanted to bolt and run.

“I—I
don’t know,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean anything. I’m
sorry.”

“Do
not be sorry,” he smiled wanly. “That is the way you are supposed
to offer a gift. We always offer with both hands. It means sincerity,
good feelings. You Americans hold something out with one hand only.
To us, that is an insult—like offering scraps to a dog. You
surprised me, that is all. It was nice. Sit down.” He took a piece
of licorice and began chewing on it thoughtfully. “I am used to
being insulted by you Americans. So many little things. You do not
know. That store—the laundry and barbershop—you call it the
‘gook’ shop; where did you ever get that word? The other day,
Corporal Walters asked me to go with him to the gook shop to offer
money to one of the laundry girls. ‘I do not know gook talk,’ he
said to me—and he smiled like a big dumb puppy. I did not know if I
should hit him or pat him on the head.”

“Come
on, he didn’t mean any harm. He just didn’t think.”

“Yes,
I know, he just did not think,” Trinh said wearily. “That is what
is so sad—none of you mean any harm; you just do not think.
Corporal Ehrhart, I have seen you taunt Vietnamese men in the market
for holding hands. You call them ‘homos.’ Did you know that is
our custom? It means only friendship. If a woman held hands with a
man in public, that would be something bad.”

“In
America, in America,” Trinh laughed softly. “This is not America,
Corporal Ehrhart. Such simple things, yet none of you ever bother to
ask. Every day, you are losing the war in a thousand little ways, and
none of you see it. The gook shop,” he snorted. “What do you
think the laundry girls tell their friends when they go home at
night? Is every young woman in America a prostitute? Why do you think
our women are?” He reached for another piece of licorice. “Your
parents must miss you very much. They send you good things to eat all
the time. Perhaps they have heard about Marine Corps chow," he
laughed.

I
laughed, too, relieved to be off the hook. “Yeh, I guess so,"
I said.

“Well,
if you are lucky, you will be going home soon.”

“Seems
like forever sometimes,” I said.

Trinh
laughed again, though it didn’t sound like a laugh. “Yes,
forever,” he said. I grasped for something to say.

“Do
you have a family, Sergeant Trinh?”

“I
have one sister left. She is a nurse. She lives—she lived with my
mother in a village south of Saigon. Perhaps she will be dead, too,
before long. My family has not been lucky. We Vietnamese have not
been lucky.”

It
hurt to see Trinh so sad and subdued— and it made me very
uncomfortable. I thrashed around in my head, trying to think of some
safe question to ask.

“My
father was killed by the Japanese when I was very little,” Trinh
continued in a monotone. “I never knew him. We were living in the
Red River delta then, not far from Haiphong. When the communists took
over the north, my mother was afraid. She thought the communists
would kill us because my father once worked for the French, in the
post office. That is what people were saying. So we ﬂed to the
south. My oldest sister died along the way. She stepped on a mine. I
do not know if it was a Viet Minh mine or a French one. It does not
matter.” After another silence, he reached into a box by his feet
and pulled out a letter. “It is from my sister,” he said. “My
mother has been killed by American artillery. I did not even get to
bury her.”

The
mother and child I’d seen on Barrier Island back in August leaped
into my head; my stomach buckled and I dropped the bag of licorice.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant Trinh,” I stammered. “Jesus. Jesus, I’m
sorry, Trinh.”

“So
am I.” He picked up the bag slowly and handed it to me. I am going
to miss your red licorice,” he said. The six eight-inch guns in the
compound roared, shaking the hooch and sending a trail of invisible
whistling steel down the long corridor of the night.

“Is
that what happened this morning, Trinh? Is it because of your
mother?”

“That
is only the end of it,” he said. “What is your expression?”

“The
last straw?”

“Yes.
The last straw on the camel. How old are you?”

“Eighteen.
I’ll be nineteen the end of this month.”

“Do
you know how long I have been ﬁghting? I was drafted when you were
twelve years old; I have been ﬁghting for six and one half years,
and there is no end in sight. Every year it gets worse. Every year,
the Vietcong grow stronger. When I was drafted, the VC fought us with
sharpened bamboo sticks and Japanese riﬂes and French riﬂes. Now
they fight us with Russian rockets and Chinese grenades and American
machine guns. You are their best recruiters. You Americans come with
your tanks and your jets and your helicopters, and everywhere you go,
the VC grow like new rice in the fields. You do not understand
Vietnam. You have never bothered to understand us, and you never will
bother because you think you have all the answers. Do you know what
Uncle Ho says? ‘You Americans will tire of killing us before we
tire of dying.’ Sometimes I think he is right—and sometimes, I
think you Americans will never grow tired of killing.”

“That’s
not true, Trinh! What do you think I’m doing here? I didn't have to
come here. I wasn’t drafted. I could’ve stayed home where it was
safe, and so could the rest of us. A lot of good people have died
trying to help you—and you know it, Trinh. You’ve known a lot of
them. You people asked for our help, for chrissake.”

“I
did not ask you for anything!” he responded sharply. “Ky and
Thieu and the rest of those fat, bloated bandits who are getting
ﬁlthy rich from this war—they asked for help. They do not speak
for the Vietnamese. They do not speak for me. Your President Johnson
is too ignorant or too arrogant to understand such a simple truth.
You help the whores and the pimps, and you take the people from the
land where their ancestors are buried and put them in tin cages where
they cannot fish or grow rice or do anything but hate and die—and
if they do not want to leave the bones of their ancestors, you call
them communists and beat them and put them in prison and kill them.
You Americans are worse than the VC. ”

“Wait
a minute, g*dd*mn it! Don’t tell me it’s all our f*cking fault.
What about those f*cking national policemen yesterday? We didn’t
beat up on that kid. They did!”

“If
the people ruled Vietnam, those dogs would be cut by a thousand
knives!” Trinh nearly shouted. “They are exactly the kind of pigs
and vermin you Americans like because they do not argue with you and
they grin like fools while you and your friends destroy a Buddhist
temple [as Erhart's patrol
had done “just in case – ha, ha” a few days before].
Your father is a priest, Corporal Ehrhart. How would you feel if I
came to your father’s church and broke it down? You don’t
understand anything, do you? Do you think I voted for Thieu last
week? Did you know that a Buddhist asking for peace almost won the
election, even though no newspaper in Vietnam was allowed to tell his
story? Did you know that Thieu has already thrown him in prison?! And
you Americans praise Thieu, and tell yourselves you are helping us.
Sometimes I think you are the most evil nation on earth.”

“I
don’t have to take this sh*t!” I shouted. “I come over here
because I’m feeling bad for you, and you sh*t all over me.”

“No,
Corporal Ehrhart! You and your friends come over here and sh*t all
over my country, and I will not take it anymore.”

“F*ck
you, man,” I said, getting up quickly and turning toward the door.

“Wait!”
Trinh shouted. “Wait! Don’t go. Please.” I stopped, but didn’t
turn around. My whole body shook, my lips biting down hard against
tears. “Sit down, please.” I walked back slowly and sat down
across from Trinh, but I couldn’t look at him. “I’m sorry,
Corporal Ehrhart. I do not mean to accuse you. I know you are not a
bad man. You are just very young.” He paused. “You are very
young, and you do not know. Armies are always made of the young.”
Trinh took hold of my hand and pressed it between both of his. He
lifted all three hands between us. “It means friendship,” he
said. “Do not be angry with me. It is all so sad.” His voice
broke. The 155s across the compound punched a volley of steel into
the night, a ripple of air and echoing sound filling the vacuum left
in their wake. “My country is bleeding to death, Corporal Ehrhart.
My beloved Vietnam is dying. I have fought hard. I am tired. Someday,
perhaps, you will understand.”

“What’ll
they do to you, Trinh?” I asked after a long silence.

“I
do not know. Make me a private and send me back to an ARVN battalion,
I think. Send me where there is heavy ﬁghting. At least I will die
among my own people.”

We
sat in silence for a very long time. I felt numb, dizzy and sick to
my stomach. Trinh’s hands surrounded mine with a pocket of warmth.

“I
guess I’d better go, Sergeant Trinh,” I ﬁnally said.

“Yes,
it is late. Thank you for coming.”

“Trinh,
I don’t know what to say. You know, I mean, I just—I’m sorry,
Trinh.”

“It
is not your fault,” said Trinh. “You are very young.”

We
both stood up. “Good luck, Sergeant Trinh,” I croaked. “Here.”
I handed him the bag of red licorice, and turned to leave.

“Good
luck to you,” Trinh said softly. And then in a voice even softer,
he added, “I hope you make it, little brother.”

Early
the next morning, an ARVN major and two ARVN enlisted men arrived at
the command post in a jeep, and took Sergeant Trinh away with them.

Sergeant
Trinh was trying to be a good neighbor. How good a neighbor did he
consider even well-intentioned American soldiers? How likely would he
have been to listen to the gospel from a pro-war American?

i
OK, I’m exaggerating here. I was a rising ninth-grader during
1967’s Summer of Love. While it was then that I first kissed a
girl on the lips, I didn’t lose my virginity until my honeymoon.
The closest I’ve come to consuming illegal drugs would have been
one can of beer with my father and one of his friends, but then only
if Massachusetts’ drinking age was over 18 at the time. So my
claim to hippiedom is mostly wishful thinking. But I came to Christ
and free enterprise because I saw them as fighting the respectable
establishment and fulfilling the hippie dream that went sour. Though
Jesus is the ultimate critic of hippiedom, my emotions see him as
the fulfillment of what was good about it; I leave it to others to
portray him as the fulfillment of establishment aspirations.

ii
“What about World War II?” you ask. That’s as close as can be
gotten to an exception to my rule. It will be the subject of another
blog post. Stay tuned.